Daily news and top headlines for broadband communications engineering and design professionals

Time Warner Cable’s NaviSite has opened the doors on a new enterprise class data center in Santa Clara, Calif. The state-of-the-art data center—the building is owned by data center provider Digital Realty—joined NaviSite’s nine existing data centers across the United States and the United Kingdom.

Nickelodeon is creating brand-new content and resurrecting old shows for a mobile subscription service aimed at preschoolers. The $6-a-month service called Noggin will have new games and activities alongside archives of shows no longer on any of Nickelodeon's TV channels.

Phoenix police are investigating an act of vandalism that left people across northern Arizona without the use of the Internet, cellphones and landlines for several hours. CenturyLink spokesman Alex Juarez said the problem was first reported around noon Wednesday. Internet and phone service started to come back to some residents and businesses in Flagstaff by 6:30 p.m.

Connectivity is great, perhaps especially for engineers and other scientists, but are we changed when we connect? And what could happen if people become connected themselves, through augmentations and implants?

Frontier Communications will become the first service provider to offer TiVo’s Roamio DVR-based service over-the-air (OTA.) Starting mid-year, TiVo and Frontier will jointly market and deploy co-branded versions of TiVo’s whole home offerings and services, but the OTA element was designed for Frontier’s broadband customers that don’t subscribe to typical linear tiers.

TransGaming has expanded its partnership with Liberty Global to bring its on-demand TV games to Liberty’s next generation Horizon set-top boxes. Liberty Global will be offering TransGaming’s GameTree TV to subscribers in the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland Ireland, Poland and Hungary.

Pushed along by high demand in the PON sector, the worldwide broadband access market, which also includes DSL and cable technologies, set a new record of $11.5 billion last year. Dell’Oro Group senior analyst Alam Tamboli said PON spending had picked up in North American last year with the advent of gigabit networks, but those deployments were small when compared to China.

Comcast executives Neil Smit and CEO Brian Roberts said on this morning’s fourth-quarter and year-end earnings call that Comcast was looking at ways to monetize Wi-Fi/wireless that could result in a launch over the coming months. Both Roberts and Smit declined to provide specifics on what the new Wi-Fi products or services would be.

Thanks to “significant contributions” from Arris, RDK Management announced this morning that it was adding more support for the Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) standard that is widely employed in Europe and other parts of the world. The Reference Design Kit (RDK), which is a pre-integrated software bundle that provides a common platform for CPE devices, now supports in-band DVB Service Information (DVB-SI) elements.

According to recent report commissioned by Verizon, the Internet of Things (IoT) sector is being powered by technological, political and social factors that are driving more organizations to adopt IoT-enabled services and platforms. The use of social media and mobile technology—along with declining costs for IoT equipment, processing power and connectivity—were cited as factors for the current momentum behind IoT adoption.

Interop Technologies is adopting Taqua’s Virtual Mobile Core and Mobile Client, which will allow Interop to include voice over Wi-Fi (VoWiFi) and Voice over LTE (VoLTE) among the communications features it provides among its cloud-based services.

FairPoint Communications workers have a new contract, and they're ready to return to work this week. More than 1,700 workers in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont report for duty Wednesday for the first time since going on strike four months ago. Officials announced Sunday that they'd ratified a new contract.

TIA and Wi-Sun said they will cooperate in areas of mutual interest. One of the specific areas of mutual interest is the proposed TR-51 standard, which is being developed specifically for Smart Utility Networks.

Frontier Communications Corp. (FTR) on Thursday reported fourth-quarter net income of $13.9 million. On a per-share basis, the Stamford, Connecticut-based company said it had net income of 1 cent. Earnings, adjusted for one-time gains and costs, were 4 cents per share.

RDK is continuing to mature with each release, but it’s important to understand the architecture and what other functionality an operator might need to complete the offering. A thoughtful approach to building an RDK solution will benefit the operator both during and after deployment, making future support and subsequent releases a much smoother process.

This appears to be the first time a news app has been developed for a game console. Users will gain access to multiple simultaneous streams of live video as well as on-demand content, entertainment news, original programming and highlights from ABC News programs.

Cox Communications has formed a joint venture with Cleveland Clinic to further develop in-home healthcare services. The new telehealth and home health services will be offered by the joint venture Vivre Health.

Kontron coordinated the establishment of the research facility in Penang, and enlisted Cisco, Dell, IBM, Intel, and Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) as participants. The new lab is part of Malaysia's Collaborative Research in Engineering, Science & Technology program.

As of the end of last year, both Mike Hayashi and Mike LaJoie officially retired from Time Warner Cable, but over the course of 25 years or so, the two Mikes were cable’s own version of a dynamic duo. (Just don’t ask them which one was Batman and which was Robin.) For their long, distinguished careers at Time Warner Cable, Hayashi and LaJoie were named CED’s Persons of the Year.

The MSO said that in the past year or so, it has more than doubled its catalog of live streaming networks on the Xfinity TV Go app, and more than 30 percent of Xfinity TV customers are using TV Everywhere monthly.

Comcast Labs has forged a partnership with startup accelerator Boomtown to build an Internet of Things (IoT) lab in Boomtown’s hometown of Boulder, Colo. The companies said the IoT lab will be one of the first in nation when it launches during “Boulder Startup Week” in May.